Hi all,

I have been doing some research into turbos etc and i think I have finally decided what I am going to do.
My original plan was a big turbo conversion using a GT250r turbo (as Coopman has), then I saw the ATP turbo kit using a GT28rs, but after speaking to the guy who will be doing the software for whichever option I choose, he has advised me that a hybrid turbo may be the best route...

This involves taking apart the stock Mini Cooper S turbo, upgrading the internals such as the thrust bearings and the shaft, and placing larger turbine and compressor wheels onto it. A common upgrade is the K04 wheels which are upto 5mm larger and thus are able to flow quite a bit more air. (bear in mind a turbo spins at upto 90,000rpm so 5mm makes a lot of diffference!!)
I have been quoted 725$ to do this and it will run on the stock map, although I will be getting my map altered to suit it. According to my tuner, he has done one before and achieved 292bhp (BHP not WHP) and this was using a Cooper S with only a Milltek Downpipe (no other mods). It was running around the 20psi mark on a hybrid K03 turbo and had a slightly raised redline of 7150rpm.
He was able to safely get it to hold 20psi from 1500rpm till 5850rpm, and then it held 18psi until the redline.
With doing a hybrid, you retain the quick spool up of the characteristc K03 turbo as the compressor wheel can either be left stock (so quick spool up) or made slightly larger so that it will flow more, but have a slightly slower spool.... this is upto the size of wheel you decide upon. Apparently most K03 and K04 turbos have the same size compressor wheel, although there are some "powerful" K04 units which have a slightly larger compressor wheel.

He reckoned this was safe and within the turbo's new limits, and well in the limits of the car. He linked his software upto to the knock sensors and said that the finished map was still within the safe margins, and there was no knock anywhere in the rpm band.
He said the stock injectors have been rated upto 330bhp but they were running at 100% duty cycle and thus werent safe to be run at that everyday.

I will hopefully be getting this done in the coming months, so with myself and Coopmans large GT28R turbo we should see some exciting results from these R56 motors

 

I don't get it. Why would you gut a k04 to put in a k03? Why not just install the k04? The size difference between the two is so minimal lag shouldn't be an issue.

 

Cos a K04 has completely different fitments mate.
It would need a new downpipe, new charge pipe connection, new manifold / new manifold adaptor, new oil lines, new gaskets etc..

But if you can put K04 internals into a K03 (which you can) then it means its a case of taking off your K03 getting the work done to it, and then bolting it back on as per its original fitting.

True bolt on power

 

It's a bit like what they did with the factory JCW no?

Was it PTorque who has had a hybrid working on the R56?

 

No trade-offs/negatives/long-term reliability issues to doing this?

 

Yup - you got it in 1

And yep its EXACTLY like what they did with the factory JCW. That uses a K03 turbo charger just like the normal Cooper S, but it has slightly larger turbine wheels so it flows more air and thus has higher bhp, which is exactly the same as what Im doing here. I bet JCW didnt go all that far though (as with the Supercharger wheel on the R53 Cooper S where JCW used an 11.5% reduced size wheel, whereas tuners were offering upto a 19% reduced wheel!!) and that it is perfectly fine and safe to go bigger and better like it was proved with the R53.
Obviously the JCW has other mods too like forged internals which help it to produce even more power, but the turbo charger has been hybrid'd to be more powerful.

 

hurry up and do it! and tell us everything. i like the way this sounds , upgrade what you have vs a whole new turbo etc. it would be nice to do a swap out , buy upgraded turbo and core reshipment back. do it do it .

 

As far as I can see, no.
Running a larger K04 turbo (effectively) means that the turbo is working less hard to produce the same power. I am getting these figures off the top of my head, but for instance a K03 running @ 20psi might be the equivalent of a K04 running at 17psi if you get me..
However, I will be getting a map done to ensure that the turbo is being worked to its full potential, while still within safe limits of both the engine and turbo.
One slight trade off may that I get a touch more spool up if I decide to go with the larger compressor wheel. If I stick with the same size compressor wheel I should see little to no change in lag, but a worst case scenario is that it will spool up something like 300rpm later than stock (so about 1800rpm) but the positive is that it will be able to hold power much longer at the top of the rev range.
I did a lot of my research by just googling such terms as "k03 k04 hybrid" and "hybrid K03 turbo" etc. It seems a very popular thing in the VAg world where there are lots of things I have read that see Cupra's and GTi's peaking at about 250bhp on the K03 but seeing 290bhp+ on the K03/4 hybrid.
The best thing (for you guys in the US) is that most of the companies I have found that do hybrid turbos are US based... whereas there are only 3 or 4 I have found in the UK so far..
Im not saying this is better or worse than a large turbo, but in my case, the whole thing including getting a full remap done to accomodate the new power is costing around $1300, where as a large turbo KIT is around $2000 and then you gotta add $700 for the software.
However with the hybird, provided you dont go too silly on the wheel size you dont NEED a remap. It should still run ok without one, but to get the full benefit I think you should get one done..
If this gets me close to the 300bhp mark I will be happy. I am currently at 265ish, so an extra 30bhp from a larger turbo is about what seems to be the average gain.
Ps - when they are doing the hybrid they can also strengthen up the internals of the turbo charger to make it safer for it to run and hold higher boost. I will be doing this, so in some ways having a hybrid K03/4 turbo running at high boost is SAFER than running a stock K03 with hoost boost applications like the Alta PnP... and produces more power.
The engine isnt the limiting factor here, its the turbo.

 

Thats what Im planning on doing
Just got to work out which is the best way of approaching this

1) Take my car off the road for a few days, take the turbo off and get it Hybrid'd then re-fit it
2) Buy a 2nd hand turbo charger off a Mini Cooper S, send that to be Hybrid'd and retain the use of my car while the work is being done. Then fit the new Hybrid turbo in place of my stock turbo, and sell my stock turbo (but who would buy it??)
3) Buy a brand new K03 turbocharger and get it hybrid'd (more expensive $1700 for just the new turbo and hybriding) and then get software later on as I cant afford this option all at once..

Its certainly more attractive in my eyes than having to replace half the engine like you have to when you go down the "big turbo" route such as the Alta and ATP kit...

 

get a bicycle and take it off the road and do it.

 

I HAVE A .. KO3 TURBO HYBRID KO4- I REPROGRAMMING IN THE P-PAR ... I FRON BARCELONA SPAIN .... 245 cv at 6400 ...
335 N.m to 3700 ..... 260 n.m to 6500

 

I guess it just depends on your perspective. You really don't need to replace the DP, charge pipe, etc, just modify them. I guess it just depends on what you want to modify, the turbo or the piping.

 

While what you are saying is true, the modifications arent exactly easy.
The standard downpipe will just not fit, no two ways about it. You would need to chop the end off it (so making it an open pipe) and then find some way of welding a new Garrett style flange onto it with some way of making the oval flange convert down into a round tuibe - not easy.
Then you would need a silicone hose reducer for the charge pipe so you could use your stock one, again this would have to be made to measure, so not cheap or easy to find.
The manifold would need a special plate being fabricated up to allow the turbo and manifold to connect - this would have to be a custom plate, not a universal one, so again not cheap.
Then you would need the oil line converters (mini fitment to garrett fitment)
New heatshield

etc etc, the list goes on...

Whereas doing a hybrid is as easy as taking the turbo off, modifying it, putting the turbo back on.... job done :D

 

I for one will be looking forward to this

Pretty expensive though.. £500 for turbo work plus a custom remap at £500!

 

my ko3-ko4 hibrid the internald parts are k04-023.. the bigger ko4

 

Wow this sound's very cool, I'd like to see how this works out. Just curious though, how would this affect gas mileage? I know that certain parts such as intake and exhaust actually help gas mileage...

 

JIO007 - what wheels have they put on your turbo?
How do you find the lag, is there any lag or is it just the same? And has the top end power (from 4500 rpm upwards) improved?
Where did you get your software done etc?

 

I too would like to know if a better turbo would affect gas mileage in a good way or a bad way. After my intake modifications, my mileage dropped by 5mpg... but I'm sure that is because I'm a little more foot-happy... DOH!

Downpipe arrives Wednesday... can't wait to install it on my off day (Friday!!) So exicted...

 

I dont know is the short answer... but I cant see it affecting it THAT much.
Obviously more air going into the engine means more fuel needs to added to keep the compression ratio as it should be.... But this would only really apply under WOT or at least 50% throttle.
During normal driving I cant see the MPG being affected tbh.

Ps - I rung the people who are doing this modification this morning and they have just finished doing an EVO VIII and they fitted a 2.5mm larger compressor wheel, with a 1mm deeper blade, and left the turbine wheel as standard.... 50bhp increase with stock map!! The guy is getting it mapped accordingly as we speak and then they are doing another power run, but he is hoping for a 75bhp increase.
The compressor wheel I am looking at getting is 4mm larger than stock (unsure of its depth at the moment) and I am leaving the turbine exhaust side as standard too...
Although i dont expect to see as big a gain as that, it proves that a hybrid turbo can be a very worthwhile mod!
Another common modification they do is the Audi TT K03 turbocharger, which takes them from 180bhp stock, to 285bhp with JUST the turbo and a software map (ie no other mods) and he is fairly sure that our turbo chargers are pretty much identical to the 180bhp variant of the Audi TT.

I will be going as big as I can on the compressor side, but by leaving the turbine outlet the same I am hopefully not going to get any noticeable lag increase. He said 300rpm later spool would be a worst case scenario but it would result in at least 50bhp increase from 4500 rpm upwards.

 

FYI - the downpipe modification (de catting it in my case) resulted in the biggest MPG loss. I was getting around 42mpg (UK MPG) before messing with the DP, I am now getting 35-36. However my current software map improved my MPG by 2-3 mpg, so without that the downpipe de catting could have reduced my MPG by about 10mpg!!
No regrets though, its a very very good mod. But be prepared for your MPG to suffer, even with a high flow cat I have several friends in the UK who have reported around a 8mpg loss

 

I come from the 1.8t world. You will not get a 50hp upgrade from anything internally on a k03, or k04. If you're going to put something on, get the 28rs. If you want some more advice I can get some actual data for you, but taking the k03 apart and modifying it is going to be nearly useless.

K03s parts are sometimes bigger than the k04 parts inside. I can go on all day, but prepare to burn your $725 for very limited gains.

If its not a kkk wheel, post pics. I'd like to see this =)

 

 

Speak English?

 

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Is that at the wheels or at the flywheel?
Also is the purple line your stock turbo? Can you explain?

Thanks
Nick